In Skyfall, M remarks offhandedly that “orphans always make the best recruits” as secret agents. She doesn’t explain, but I would infer that she means that commitment matters more than anything else in her line of work, and that a person with a family won’t be as fully committed because they somewhere to leave to and may have been raised with more inhibitions than someone with a harder upbringing.

In your story, are there any traits or demographic characteristics which are unusually important for your heroes (or villains)? In particular, if you have a team of heroes, what are they looking for when they choose members? (For example, what should a superhero team be looking for besides superpowers? If a team takes random people off the street on life-or-death missions because they happen to have superpowers, does that strike anybody involved as desperate and/or crazy? If not, why not?) If you have a main hero, does he/she have the trait in question? If not, how does he/she get around that?

I think the single most important trait that “makes a hero” is accountability; that is, purposefully owning what’s makes us who we are, owning decisions already made and the responsibility to do what’s best down the line even if its not what’s desired. It’s my opinion that a character doesn’t become a hero until that threshold has been crossed, and that everything leading up to that is simply the foundation upon which a hero, once made, is built.

In fact that’s the principal theme of my novel – that only by looking within and taking responsibility for oneself (being accountable) can a single individual change the fate of the world.

Now concerning my MC, accountability is something he develops over the course of the novel; both personally (e.g. his decisions/actions moving forward and [super importantly] his PAST…) as well as with his powers (telepathy/Psionics). It’s a double-whammy issue for him, and one that can’t be side-stepped or short-cut.

Ultimately it’s a matter of choice, and not just the right choice, but the right choice for the right reason. Something that proves to be easier said than done…

Wow, Arj. That sounds great! With my protagonist, accountability isn’t a issue. He claims to others that he is simply altruistic, but in truth his primary motivation is ambition. It leads him to make many of his mistakes.

With people he knows, there really isn’t an attempt to spin himself. Most of them know him quite well. His particular brand of ambition is the want of fame. He feels the need to be known by EVERYBODY. When people think of him, they think “the brother of” instead of just him. (His step-brother, unlike him, is quite famous.) He wants his own glory.

Wow it’s very interesting to see the different types of motivations you guys came up with for your hero. I’m going to throw a third one into the mix because it seems fitting.

In the case of my hero(ine), her parents are both alive and are living a happy, peaceful existence. Thankfully, the story is not about her relationship with her parents because that would be boring!

Her motivation to become a hero(ine) came AFTER she had used her powers for ill. In fact, a particularly traumatizing incident where hundreds of lives were lost; were what finally set her straight into making that transition into a super-heroine. Where as, prior to the incident, she was fueled mainly by revenge.

“I think the single most important trait that “makes a hero” is accountability; that is, purposefully owning what’s makes us who we are, owning decisions already made and the responsibility to do what’s best down the line even if its not what’s desired. It’s my opinion that a character doesn’t become a hero until that threshold has been crossed, and that everything leading up to that is simply the foundation upon which a hero, once made, is built.”

While reading this post I thought of the possibility of a hero who starts on the path of upholding the law, no matter their personal feelings on it, until he/she comes across a situation (like someone who deserves to die, but is legally innocent) where he/she chooses to follow their moral compass instead of the laws regarding said situation and is then forced to flee from their former life as an instrument of the law. The hero is then taken in by the villain, who made a similar decision before the beginning of the story.

I came up with it while reading your post, I figured you should know about it, as I feel it is as much your idea as it is mine.

In my stories superheroing can be socially and monetarily remunerative, so there are as many selfish motivations for putting on the cape as selfless ones. I suppose personal bravery might be as close to a universal trait as any–but there are different degrees even there, from afraid but determined to experienced and utterly confident. And the superhero that is afraid but determined is more interesting.

I think that Superhero teams would definietely keep an eye out for several desirable attributes in selecting a recruit.:
– A useful power
– A clean or at least semi-clean record
– Little to no family (especially dependents. However, this could be circumvented if it was a “your country/friends/family/humankind need you” situation.)
– A day job that either pays less than a superhero team or takes little time
– Good characteristics/ works well with the others
– Money (I’m sure many superhero teams need more)

We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]

Hey DeadPool, You are a funny guy. How did you become a super hero? What do you do when you’re not doing anything? Do you like being a superhero? Why do you wear a mask? Why do you wear red and white? Are you Canadian? Getting superpowers is sort of a long story. Some people […]

I feel like a marketing executive put a gun to the screenwriter’s head and said “I don’t CARE what the movie is about, put New York City, London, and Hong Kong in it. Just do that thing where the villain is trying to collect plot coupons around the world in places that happen to be […]

Den Warren, (K-Tron, Metahuman Wars) is issuing a call for 3k-5k word submissions for a superhero prose fiction anthology titled, The Supreme Archvillain Election. Each submission will be a supervillain sitting at a huge table explaining why they should be voted as the Supreme Archvillain, then they go into a story, etc. Reprint excerpts and […]

1. This movie is about as bad as Catwoman but, in Catwoman’s defense, it had okay action scenes. 2. Man of Steel particularly struggled with family dialogue. E.g. Clark’s Kryptonian parents take 3 minutes to describe their plan to send him to Earth and say their goodbyes. It’s pretty bland stuff, e.g. melodramatic intonations like […]

I spent 5 hours this week watching Man of Steel and taking 5,000 words of notes. It was like being trapped on an alien planet where the atmosphere consists 80% of characters telling Clark what incredible, grandiose things he symbolizes, 20% of daringly bad action scenes, 15% of grimly constipated expressions, and 15% of acting […]

Out of the Past is a 1947 noir thriller so brilliant I cannot do it justice. I would definitely recommend it, particularly if you’re working with… Characters Plots Accidental deaths falsely claimed as murder-suicides Double-crosses, triple-crosses, and maybe a quadruple-cross depending on how you interpret a self-defense kill with a fishing reel. A complex plot […]